Back to November 2022 News Update
Poor work, health and safety outcomes impose a significant financial cost on individuals and their family, the broader community, business and Australian economy more broadly through workers’ compensation payments, loss of productivity, reduced work participation and increased healthcare costs.
To explore these impacts further, we recently published a ground-breaking report that quantifies the cost of workplace injury and illness in Australia and demonstrates the economy-wide benefits that can be realised with improved work health and safety outcomes.
The project, undertaken by our Agency’s Data Analysis section in partnership with Deloitte Access Economics, uses an innovative modelling approach to estimate how much value could be created within the Australian economy by removing work-related injury and illness.
This is the first known research of its kind to adopt the World Health Organization’s guidelines to identifying the economic consequences of disease and injury – something we will be able to share with our international counterparts.
Key findings from Safer, healthier, wealthier: The economic value of reducing work-related injuries and illnesses show that in the absence of work-related injuries and illnesses, on average each year:
- Australia’s economy would be $28.6 billion larger
- 185,500 additional full-time equivalent jobs would be created, and
- workers across all occupations and skill levels would benefit from an average wage rise of 1.3%.
The findings are quite staggering and clearly demonstrate the economic and productivity benefits of investing in work health and safety. It will provide a strong evidence-base to help shift thinking about work health and safety in Australia over the next decade – moving from a focus on ‘how’ to do safety to a focus on ‘why’ we do safety.
Safer, healthier, wealthier also helps build an understanding of the substantial role work health and safety plays in contributing to Australia’s prosperity, driving economic and productivity improvements. We know that keeping people safe and healthy at work is the right thing to do and now we have research that shows that workplaces free of injury and illness provide benefits for all Australians, including more jobs and better pay.
Read Safer, healthier, wealthier: The economic value of reducing work-related injuries and illnesses on the Safe Work Australia website.